“Noir is the indigenous Los Angeles form: It was created here, it grew up here and from here it spread, not only as a genre but as a way of looking at life, character and fate. As a framing lens, it’s now so powerful that it seems not only to be a strategy for telling a story but a way to understand — automatically, unconsciously — how a story works. … Raymond Chandler’s narrow mean streets now encompass Tokyo, Berlin, São Paulo, London — any city that has crime or deceit or cracks in the facade or some event in which fate’s jaws snap shut with cruel or ironic finality.”